


Flash Freeze

by ColourlessZero



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Flash Freeze, Gen, M/M, Murder Mystery, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 01:19:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9693551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColourlessZero/pseuds/ColourlessZero
Summary: If you saw an acquaintance commit murder what would you do? If you had irrefutable photographic evidence of it what would you do? And if they knew you saw them?These are the questions swimming around in Tsukishima's mind.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was really charmed by [this post on Tumblr](http://ao3tagoftheday.tumblr.com/post/155523820451/opposite-of-slow-burn-flash-freeze) and really wanted to make "Flash Freeze" an actual tag because it sounded fun. This was meant to be a fake marriage au, but I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I'M SORRY. I HAVE NO SELF-CONTROL. It's now a murder mystery and we're just gonna roll with it.
> 
> Let's get a few things out of the way first:
> 
> 1\. I have no idea how shippy this fic will be  
> 2\. This AU may turn out very strange

Real life stories these days were news stories shared around the dinner table by someone well-informed about everything that went wrong in the world. They always began with “Did you hear?” followed by a sob story or some apparently unbelievable atrocity happening in a far flung nation. Eventually they all sounded the same. People never changed.

This one began with a flash, a sound, and ended in silence. 

It was an unhappy one of course, since it was a real life story after all. If you expected otherwise you would find yourself sorely disappointed. 

Tsukishima could confirm one hundred percent that he was hardly ever disappointed. It wasn’t because he was especially optimistic. His standards may be flung towards the stars, but his expectations weren’t even at ankle height. They were buried quite a few feet underground. He expected the worst possible outcome for every situation and made plans to accommodate them. An occupational disease, perhaps. Being a software engineer wasn’t easy.

As expected, the day dragged on and worse, the team planned to end the week with socialising and terrible singing. Naturally, Tsukishima was prepared. They were due to launch the new program the following Tuesday. The code itself was finished and thoroughly tested. It worked, but some parts could be more efficient and there were still a few minor kinks left behind from the debugging stage. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a few more hours. So nobody was surprised when he said he would stay behind to work on it a bit more and, maybe, head over when he was finished. They let him go easily enough, dying to get a bit of alcohol in their system. He remained at the office, tapping away on his keyboard doing what he did best: ~~fixing~~ perfecting other people’s code.

Once he finished he never went to join his team at the izakaya. Instead, he meandered outside the office building, admiring the world’s most beautiful sunset. His favourite thing about the office building was that it was a simple, two-story building by the sea where the view was best. The sun straddled the border between day and night. Its light shifted from gold to red, dipping the edges of the sky in delicate pink and lavender while the ocean beneath it sparkled. The water here in Karasuno was so clear Tsukishima can make out small schools of fish lingering by the shore and the sand shifting with the movement of the waves. The sea smelled refreshingly salty instead of smelling like sewage and had none of the murky pollution associated with big cities and their bustling docks.

He began to stroll along the path snaking atop a slope of rocks where the waves came to kiss the oysters below. The path and rock-lined shore curved into a small inlet on both ends, gently embracing the sea in return. When he walked here to go home the danger of falling to his death and drowning beneath the waves was never far. With that in mind he always took special care to maintain a safe distance from the edge of the rocks.

Today was no different, but just before he needed to turn off the path and down a side street he stopped to take out his camera. He wanted to share this beautiful sunset with his family back in Miyagi. They always complained he wasn’t active enough on social media for them to know what he’s up to. With the camera strap firmly around his wrist he framed the sunset perfectly, catching one arm of the inlet where there was a small park full of willow trees. Their foliage was so long it almost touched the ground.  

A burst of white flashed from his camera. A heavy splash disturbed the quiet. Dismissing it as a fish leaping out of the water, Tsukishima was too engrossed with checking the photo to take much notice of it.

He would later come to regret this decision, for in the bottom right corner of his photo a disturbing scene was preserved in pixels. Just at the point of the inlet were two men under a willow tree, close enough to distinguish their features. One of them he knew. The other was too blurred with motion to be certain of his identity, but he was wearing a black coat that seemed familiar to Tsukishima. For simplicity’s sake Tsukishima called him Black Coat. Black Coat was falling to his death, tumbling down a slope of sharp rocks and into the waves below.

The man he knew had his hand outstretched after having shoved Black Coat from behind, face completely impassive.

The camera drooped in Tsukishima’s hands. He looked up across the inlet.

Shirabu Kenjirou stared right back at Tsukishima, his trench coat whipping about him in the wind. His mouth was a straight line. His eyes held a cold calmness that chilled Tsukishima to the bone. 

All Tsukishima could hear was water sloshing over the rocks, the wind and the silent message in his head: “I know what you saw.”

Horror erupted across Tsukishima’s skin and adrenaline dragged along his veins. On frightfully unsteady legs he sprinted all the way home with the camera clutched in his hand. He fumbled with the lock on the door, secured all the windows and shut himself up in his room. He did nothing but tremble for a long while. 

This was crazy! Someone died–murdered! And the evidence was in  _ his _ camera. Logically, he should immediately contact the police, but he couldn’t think straight. This was a serious crime. What if he was wrong? Would anyone believe him? He didn’t quite believe it himself. He zoomed up on the photo again and again, blinking to clear away anything in his eyes. But the picture didn’t change. That was, without a shadow of a doubt, Shirabu. The hardworking and reliable Shirabu, shoving someone to their death.

Tsukishima made up his mind. Murder was wrong and that was that. If Tsukishima thought witnessing a murder was the worst case scenario that day then he would be disappointed.

By the time he made up his mind he was already too late. The greatest storm Karasuno had ever seen descended upon them. Thick, dark clouds made the skies darker than black. White-hot cracks of lightning lit up the world in split seconds and the howling winds violently rattled windows until they threatened to shatter at the slightest touch. Rain splattered everywhere, drowning everything.

The town was as dark as the sky. They had a blackout and all communications were shut down. They were still a small, isolated town so their cellphone towers were few and far between. 

Tsukishima thought about the rain hammering on his roof. It would probably wash away any blood the waves had missed. He thought about Black Coat and how the storm churned up the ocean, how that body would be swept out with the currents. He couldn’t shake off the feeling Shirabu knew the storm was coming in advance. Shirabu was a meticulous man.

That didn’t matter. Tsukishima’s mind was set. As soon as the storm passed he would head out to the police station himself. Unfortunately, Tsukishima wasn’t that lucky. The storm raged the next day and the day after that.

The morning the storm cleared Tsukishima woke up from what little sleep he had bleary-eyed and determined to get to the police station. He clicked open the door and promptly scowled at inky hair and bright blue eyes.

Kageyama was there with a clipboard, clicking his pen.  _ Click, click, click _ .

Tsukishima wanted to throttle him. “Can I help you?” He tried his best to sound polite and failed immediately.

Kageyama’s face hardened. They did not get along at all, but he had a job to do. “Any damages?”

“Just a broken window and a few tiles flew off my roof.”

Pen scratched on paper in swift strokes. Tsukishima felt sorry for whoever had to decipher Kageyama’s messy scrawl. No matter how much he disliked Kageyama he couldn’t deny that he was useful. He was a brilliant statistician. Not that Tsukishima would ever say it out loud. It was Kageyama’s job to know things. Everything going on around the world. Every bit of information no matter how irrelevant passed through his head and turned into a plan that best matched his forecast of the future. Naturally, he was up to date with everything that went on in Karasuno.

“That’s lucky. Twenty homes experienced flooding and thirty six had to replace most of their windows.”

“Yes, very lucky,” Tsukishima said dryly. He really wanted to get to the police station. Since when was reporting a murder so difficult?

Dawdling at Tsukishima’s doorstep he attempted to make small talk. He started incessantly clicking his pen again. “Did you hear?” Kageyama began. 

“I don’t think anyone can hear much over that clicking.” Tsukishima smirked. “But do continue.”

With a final click Kageyama gave him the worst news possible. 

“Ushijima-san is missing.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! \^0^/ Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. Comments are always appreciated~
> 
> You can also find me on [Tumblr](http://colourlesszero.tumblr.com/). If you want to follow this fic on tumblr the tag is [#zero: flash freeze](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/zero%3A-flash-freeze)


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